Tell these peddlers to put a sock in it

Sunday

Mar 3, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Sid McKeen Wry & Ginger

Be it known by all present that the anonymous clown who ponied up $92,613 for one bloody sock ex-Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling wore in a World Series game was not I. First, I don’t have enough money to waste it buying a 9-year-old sweat sock, bloody or otherwise. I wouldn’t pay even 9 bucks for a matched pair of brand-new designer socks, let alone $92,000.

Second, I wouldn’t dream of coughing up a small fortune to own something I had no clue how to use. I can just imagine showing the thing off to houseguests: “Oh, hey, why don’t we stop by the den, I have something special to show you folks. Ta-da, Look at that!”

“So? Looks like an old sock to me. Why is it framed? What happened to it? Did the color run in the washer? Or did you lose the mate in the dryer? Happens at our place all the time, doesn’t it, honey?”

“No, no. Schilling wore it the night he won Game 2 of the 2004 Series. You remember. He hurt his ankle, and it kept bleeding after they sewed it up.”

“What, it cost you a shilling? That’s a lot of bloody money for a simple bloody old sock, isn’t it, old sport?”

“Hey, it’s a collector’s item, don’t you understand? They had it in the Baseball Hall of Fame, but Curt needed some cash after blowing all his money on a business deal that went belly up, so he put it up for auction. And I got it — for just over 90 grand. Was I lucky or what?”

“You paid what?”

“Yeah, 92 thou. A real bargain. You probably know the ball that went through Billy Buckner’s legs in the ’86 Series and wound up costing the Sox the world championship brought in $418,000, right? And they got over a million bucks for the hockey stick and two jerseys Mike Eruzione used in the ’80 Olympics against Russia.”

I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with a big-money scheme to rival Messrs. Schilling, Buckner and Eruzione. It probably won’t have a sports connection, though. In high school, I played some baseball but put in a lot of bench time. One game, the coach yelled to me to get up. I leaped forward in a split-second, and he cracked, “I’m sending in the bench.” I got a few splinters, I know that, but I doubt they’d bring much at auction.

As a grownup playing slow-pitch softball, I once grounded a ball back to the pitcher, then ran straight past him to second base, skipping first.

With my luck, if I managed to get over 90 grand for a bloody sock, before we got it framed, my wife would scoop it up with rest of the laundry and throw it in the wash. And for once, every stain would disappear like magic. Then I’d have to display the thing with an asterisk under it, pointing out that the blood had been inadvertently erased.

As it is, one of the principal activities in our household already is finding socks that match. I have two piles in my dresser drawer, one with matched pairs, the other with what I call “loners.” We never throw them away, in hopes that their counterparts will turn up somewhere in the house. They never do, but you never know. What am I offered for four loners, any one of which I may have been wearing the day the coach almost sent me in? Let’s start the bidding at $9,000.